Public Policy is social agreement written down as a universal guide for social action. We at The Policy ThinkShop share information so others can think and act in the best possible understanding of "The Public Interest."

As the various candidates for the office of President of the United States define themselves and throw their hat in the ring, we should probably take a good look at their position on the American workforce and the American workplace. Especially important will be how economic policy affects these two important areas of life–both the quality of life for most working families in the country and the quality of life at the community level as it relates to access to quality education and training for working families.

Emotional intelligence (also known as “EQ”) is an idea that grew up in academia, was popularized on pop psychology shelves and, more recently, has been made useful in leadership development and organizational management circles. From its conception, it was juxtaposed to the idea of Intelligence Quotient (IQ). Its lofty intellectual beginnings notwithstanding, EQ has been embraced by so many for so many reasons that its early paradigmatic intentions may now be lost to the many.

Popular ideas live in the minds of the many and, perhaps because of their simplicity and utility, become sustainable and prolific for both producers and consumers. Academic ideas and constructs more often tend to be quite different from popular ideas. They differ in that their currency tends to require intellectual specialization, academic environments akin to monasteries, and individuals with a broad understanding of the numerous currents and variables that give academic products their place in the refereed conversation of the nation’s professorial ranks. Emotional intelligence is an important flashpoint for forces with differing origins yet ideally common destinations–thinking individuals wanting to promote social good and noble ends. Daniel Goleman and Adam Grant are two such forces; they are social communicative pundits in the ongoing tug of war that will define the proper and productive utility, and place, of emotional intelligence, as a leadership and workforce development concept.

We may be exceedingly amazed to see academics, intellectuals, pundits, and intellectual entrepreneurs spar in the marketplace of ideas in order to promote their worth and place in the market. Certainly, Adam Grant steps into the breach and tries to hold Goleman to task for what he sees as academic obfuscation. Interestingly, he borders on ad hominem intentions and plain teasing. Perhaps Adam Grant is pandering to this electronic social media medium and finds such rhetorical tools necessary. Perhaps the conversation that is sought here with leaders understands that today’s leaders are not Plato’s philosopher kings. Indeed, Grant does not seem to see the business of management outside of specific emotional terrain so touchy feely as Goleman would. It is plain to see that Daniel Goleman’s place is secure, as the high priest of pop psychology, because his Ph.D. in Psychology and his perch on the NYTs allowed him to popularly run with the “EQ” concept and build an entrepreneurial empire which may outlive him and the rest of us. To be sure, the spoils from popular media endeavors have favored Goleman’s lot, EQ’s intellectual forefathers have not similarly gained (John Mayer and Peter Salovey). This does not bode well for future intellectuals lacking entrepreneurial prowess. You will find Mr. Grant on LinkedIn though, promoting his intellectual wares; he’ll do just fine.

Interestingly, we can look at Salovey’s dissertation from way back in 1986 for the early intellectual ground from which the concept of EQ grew (P. Salovey, The Effects of Mood and Focus of Attention on Self-Relevant Thoughts and Helping Intention, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1986). We can also look at the role of popular psychology in our culture to find similar ground for Goleman’s efforts and success. Mayer and Salovey are the original promoters of the ideas and of the intellectual history which gave intellectual buoyancy to the concept. Daniel Goleman refers to his encounter with the work of these two men in a passing way and diminishes their importance by alluding to the lack of stature of the journal in which they published the original 1990 article “Emotional Intelligence.” Goleman has turned the work of these men into a cottage industry and his published retort to Grant shows his ability to popularly promote the term “EQ” in contrast to feebly defending it. Perhaps Goleman is safe behind the popularity curtain always protecting his wizard like reputation. Up and coming scholar, Adam Grant, rightly exposes Goleman’s use of the concept as less relevant outside the parameters of academic rigor and of the realms of possible scientific discipline and emotive applications.

The concept has grown to mean so many things to so many people that it now means specifically very little within the confines of academic, intellectual or theoretical query. Salovey and Mayer’s contributions to modern management and leadership are now popularly distant from their original rigorous work. The popular development of that work may possibly have obstructed the original potential of Salovey and Mayer’s ideas and constructs, further obfuscating the road to needed progressive managerial and leadership applications. Goleman has made it common coin and personal gain–neither being efforts which have contributed significantly in taking the concept further along its original intellectual journey; nor has it helped in the building of necessary theoretical constructs that can give us an applied framework that allows for clarity regarding how and when it is useful as a heuristic model for organizational, group, or individual purposes. To be sure, Goleman now makes these claims; but his arguments are devoid of the rigor evident in the original works of the real pioneers from which the potentially useful constructs originate.

Centuries have passed since the monastic catacombs of the original academy, with its religious literati and the ensuing work of the eventually enlightened philosophers and scientists. Work that was preserved and discriminatingly shared through coveted books and into modernity. But all that has now changed and continues to change. Ideas are now increasingly, and literally, in the clouds, ubiquitous cannon fodder for daily consumption; their value and retention seems now to be more tethered to the common cause than to the lofty undertaking. Can you imagine that?

The current Republican victory either threatens healthcare access success or saves the day. Perhaps it depends on what ideas you have to form an opinion on the matter. Thousands of people inherit political and controversial opinions from their parents or grandparents. But this is not our grandparent’s America. Leadership today, and ideas to formulate solutions to our society’s most vexing social and economic challenges, must be as innovative as the ideas our forefathers forged to build our constitution. They broke new ground to form a more perfect union.

America needs help in being more perfect today. We need new ideas to help us support new social investments to address our collective responsibility to make sure that our form of government, and the leaders we put in charge, keep a fair balance regarding the social contract that makes us the greatest nation on earth. Perhaps reading the current book “Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much,” by Mullainathan and Sharif, could help?

Jus about a year ago an important book was published regarding scarcity. We were all probably a bit busy, so it did not cross our minds. Interestingly, the book is about the very social and psychological reality that caused many of us to miss the opportunity. We just don’t seem to have enough time in the day to do the things we need to do to make our life more manageable, more simple and, perhaps, more enjoyable. Without mentioning the dated and overused thought model, “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,” we are reminded of a person’s lack of efficacy when overwhelmed by environmental stimuli that dictate how we feel and perhaps what we do. Such is the case in this important book on the effects on our minds and how our mind works when confronted by daily challenges. The mind, the book’s thesis goes, has limits (“bandwidth”), and its focus is bound by our fixation on what matters among the many things coming at us. The book is important for public health, healthcare services and health education, for example, because it gives us a less pejorative and judgmental way to look at people misbehaving. Especially behaving in ways that seem irrational, or worse, lazy or undeserving, to us. Perhaps as health professionals, funders, planner and policy makers, we are distanced from the daily lives and realities of those confronted with our well intentioned helping systems and recommendations. It can be daunting and frustrating. This book may give us hope.

Mullainathan and Sharif elaborate on a conception of the haves and the have nots that is nuanced, insightful and perhaps more pragmatic than any construct we have heretofore seen; Yes, in the war on poverty. To be sure, decades have passed since our last great poverty reform (PRWORA, 1996 or Bill Clinton’s Welfare Reform Law). We now have the ACA reform (Barak Obama’s Law). This second salvo on our nation’s efforts to address the needs of the “have nots” is once again putting the poor under the looking glass. Back in the 90s version we were looking at people, being helped, being too lazy and needing to be made to work while getting help in order to get off of the government dole. Millions of people were thrown off of the welfare rolls and when it was all said and done a Government Accounting Office (GAO) report declared that the majority of people remaining on the rolls were ill and not employable. This was an important report, by “objective” pundits representing the federal government; and you would think that would have been enough to usher in healthcare reform to address the urgent plight of this government policy defined and “vetted” group. It wasn’t.

Perhaps due to our national political discourse and the focus on levels of unemployment that could not longer be explained by the “lazy people on welfare” phenomenon, the nation began to focus on working people, many who were not faring much better than people on welfare. The struggling middle class and the “deserving working poor” became the popular political constituency. The increasingly divided electorate called for new issue that could wedge open the door to a new group that could tip the electoral balance. This need fueled to drive for an electoral strategy focus on new votes and created the conditions and demand for strategies promising to move this demographic to the polls. Enter today’s healthcare reform scenario.

Perhaps this is why healthcare reform remains a political fight with uncertainties and future possibilities for failure. Just as the end of the PRWORA’s success, in throwing the poor of the welfare rolls, may now echo the present reality where we will have disrupted thousands of families’ lives, only to throw them off the insurance rolls.

“Scarcity captures us because it is important, worthy of our attention, but we cannot fully choose when our minds will be riveted. We focus on scarcity even when we do not want to. We think about that impending project not only when we sit down to work on it but also when we are at home trying to help our child with her homework. The same automatic capture that helps us focus becomes a burden in the rest of life. Because we are preoccupied by scarcity, because our minds constantly return to it, we have less mind to give to the rest of life.”

We can all agree that extremely intelligent people can disagree and sometimes succumb to irrational feelings, misunderstandings and conflict. It is not enough to be smart. It is also important to get along with people, to understand them, and to express ourselves in pleasant ways that help us all get along.

We all at one time or another let our emotions carry us to places we thought we could never reach and some places and situations we never intended to be in. Emotions are an important part of our successes and failures and that includes the emotions that drive the actions of others who impact our journey. It is hard to imagine that learning to manage our emotions and to better understand the emotions of others is not an extremely desirable thing that we can pursue in a straightforward manner. But for many it is not. The concepts that cover this important topic, “emotional literacy” and “emotional competence” can be summarized in the operational definition of emotional intelligence.

Definition of Emotional Intelligence (EQ): “… the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions. We posit that life tasks such as those described by Cantor and her colleagues and constructive thinking defined by Epstein are laden with affective information, that this affective information must be processed (perhaps differently than the cognitive information), and that individuals may differ in the skill with which they do so. Emotional intelligence is also a part of Gardner’s view of social intelligence, which he refers to as the personal intelligences. Like social intelligence, the personal intelligences (divided into inter- and intra­ personal intelligence) include knowledge about the self and about others. One aspect of the personal intelligence relates to feelings and is quite close to what we call “emotional intelligence.” John Mayer and Peter Salovey, 1990

Emotional intelligence (also known as “EQ”) is an idea that grew up in academia, was popularized on pop psychology shelves and, more recently, has been made useful in leadership development and organizational management circles. From its conception, it was juxtaposed to the idea of Intelligence Quotient (IQ). Its lofty intellectual beginnings notwithstanding, EQ has been embraced by so many for so many reasons that its early paradigmatic intentions may now be lost to the many.

If the intelligence scale we call “IQ” has been controversial, EQ has been equally misunderstood. Even if we can all agree on a definition and on appropriate applications of EQ theory, it’s behavioral health benefits cannot be implemented through quick short-term programs nor can it’s salutary outcomes be made sustainable without a significant transformation in our health education and K through 12 school educational systems. Many of the individuals, that could benefit from the competencies that learning and having good EQ promises, are neither fortunate enough to access the education nor in social circumstances conducive to self improvement pursuits. In a more mindful and egalitarian world, more complex ideas may achieve greater buoyancy and utility. EQ is no exception.

Popular ideas live in the minds of the many and, perhaps because of their simplicity and utility, become sustainable and prolific for both producers and consumers. The dilemma is, however, that society often needs ideas that are more complex in order to solve and address vexing modern problems. To Goleman’s credit, in part due to his efforts, EQ is being applied through his numerous consulting activities and, for example, in his supportive role helping to organize a set of conferences that led to the publication of a 1997 book by John Mayer and Peter Salovey (Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence: Educational Implications) addressing possible emotional intelligence and social skills applications to address child development and conflict resolution in school systems (the academic team that initially developed the “theory” that led to EQ as a useful framework for researching and teaching the role that emotions play in achieving personal, social, and organizational success). Aside from this collaboration, though, much of what is popularly understood about EQ has been disseminated through Goleman’s consulting and pop psychology success NYTs best seller style.

Academic ideas and constructs more often tend to be quite different from popular ideas. They differ in that their currency tends to require intellectual specialization, academic environments akin to monasteries, and individuals with a broad understanding of the numerous currents and variables that give academic products their place in the refereed conversation of the nation’s professorial ranks. Emotional intelligence is an important flashpoint for forces with differing origins yet, ideally, common destinations–thinking individuals wanting to promote social good and noble ends. Daniel Goleman and Adam Grant are two such forces; they are social communicative pundits in the ongoing tug of war that will define the proper and productive utility, and place, of emotional intelligence, as a leadership and workforce development concept. According to Grant, Goleman goes too far in trying to apply EQ to business intelligence, heretofore an area reserved for things more mathematical and tangible. Goleman has been given a professional home on the pages of the prestigious Harvard Business Review, an instrument of both Grant and Goleman’s alma matter. A key question would be: Is EQ being misapplied or is the environment where it needs to be applied unready for its heuristic promises? Given the challenges, faced or ignored, by today’s business and organizational leaders, can we afford to dismiss this popular tool?

Adam Grant published a provocative article on LinkedIn formulating a critique of Goleman’s more global approach to EQ. Unfortunately, Grant’s article includes academic claims and posturing that is clouded by his overall trivial tone. We need a greater focus on academic rigor and the pursuit of more robust theoretical constructs that can yield progress towards EQ program development and implementation, in the area of behavioral health, for example. This seriousness seems to be lacking at the present time–certainly in Grant’s article (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140930125543-69244073-emotional-intelligence-is-overrated?trk=prof-post).

We may be exceedingly amazed to see academics, intellectuals, pundits, and intellectual entrepreneurs spar, in the marketplace of ideas, in order to promote their worth and place in the market. The debate seems omnipresent as it crosses many borders through the Harvard Business Review, on blogs, and here on LinkedIn. Certainly, Adam Grant steps into the breach and tries to hold Goleman to task for what he sees as academic obfuscation. Interestingly, he borders on ad hominem intentions and plain teasing. Perhaps Adam Grant is pandering to this electronic social media medium and finds such rhetorical tools necessary. Perhaps the conversation that is sought here with leaders understands that today’s leaders are not Plato’s philosopher kings. Indeed, Grant does not seem to see the business of management outside of specific emotional terrain so touchy feely as Goleman would. It is plain to see that Daniel Goleman’s place is secure, as the high priest of pop psychology, because his Ph.D. in Psychology and his perch on the NYTs allowed him to popularly run with the “EQ” concept and build an entrepreneurial empire which may outlive him and the rest of us. To be sure, the spoils from the ensuing popular media endeavors have favored Goleman’s lot, EQ’s intellectual forefathers have not similarly gained (John Mayer and Peter Salovey). This does not bode well for future intellectuals lacking entrepreneurial prowess. You will find Mr. Grant on LinkedIn though, promoting his intellectual wares; he’ll do just fine.

Interestingly, we can look at Salovey’s dissertation from way back in 1986 for the early intellectual ground from which the concept of EQ grew (P. Salovey, The Effects of Mood and Focus of Attention on Self-Relevant Thoughts and Helping Intention, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1986). We can also look at the role of popular psychology in our culture to find similar ground for Goleman’s efforts and success. Mayer and Salovey are the original promoters of the ideas and of the intellectual history which gave intellectual buoyancy to the concept. Daniel Goleman refers to his encounter with the work of these two men in a passing way and diminishes their importance by alluding to the lack of stature of the journal in which they published the original 1990 article “Emotional Intelligence.” Goleman has turned the work of these men into a cottage industry and his published retort to Grant shows his ability to popularly promote the term “EQ” in contrast to feebly defending it. Perhaps Goleman is safe behind the popularity curtain always protecting his wizard like reputation. Up and coming scholar, Adam Grant, rightly exposes Goleman’s use of the concept as less relevant outside the parameters of academic rigor and of the realms of possible scientific discipline and emotive applications. The academic trial only seems to be beginning, though, and the popular court is woefully incapable of sequestering an appropriate jury to reach a useful verdict that would bridge the cerebral gap between academic thinkers, intellectual entrepreneurs and the laboring rank and file. Given EQ’s arguably heuristic potential and the millions that are being made from its application or misapplication, we can’t have some thinking of it as business and the rest of us as “nobody’s business.”

The concept has grown to mean so many things to so many people that it now means specifically very little within the confines of academic, intellectual or theoretical query. Salovey and Mayer’s contributions to modern management and leadership are now popularly distant from their original rigorous work. The popular development of that work may possibly have obstructed the original potential of Salovey and Mayer’s ideas and constructs, further obfuscating the road to needed progressive managerial and leadership applications. Goleman has made it common coin and personal gain–neither being efforts which have contributed significantly in taking the concept further along its original intellectual journey; nor has it helped in the building of necessary theoretical constructs that can give us an applied framework that allows for clarity regarding how and when it is useful as a heuristic model for organizational, group, or individual purposes. To be sure, Goleman now makes these claims; but his arguments are devoid of the rigor evident in the original works of the real pioneers from which the potentially useful constructs originate.

Centuries have passed since the monastic catacombs of the original academy, with its religious literati and the ensuing work of the eventually enlightened philosophers and scientists. That is work that was preserved and discriminatingly shared through coveted books and into modernity. But all that has now changed and continues to change. Academia is only one voice in a cacophony of social and intellectual media now fueled by e-commerce and consumed on billions of instantaneous screens. Ideas are now increasingly, and literally, in the clouds, ubiquitous cannon fodder for daily consumption; their value and retention seems now to be more tethered to the common cause than to the lofty undertaking. Can you imagine that?

Healthy food is not easy to prepare, does not have a very long shelf life, and is more expensive than cheaper canned and mass produced “food” that contains fillers and other ingredients that return adequate profits, facilitate transportation, refrigeration, and distribution.

America’s food consumption and health connection problem goes well beyond socioeconomic issues of lack of cash and proximity and access to healthy food. Our society’s economy produces commodities and commodities are distributed based on market forces of supply and demand. Supply and demand pressures have thus far overpowered the traditional forces on the side of promoting community health. The loosing forces are:

Social do-gooders

Philanthropy

Public health officials

Conscientious parents

Suburban focused and lead prevention efforts

In short, economic forces have thus far trumped social ideas and groups aiming to undo what are basically the macro and micro consequences of food production and distribution.

Any successful efforts in this area will have to have for-profit corporations at the table with philanthropy and government officials providing public policy leadership and incentives that appeal to corporate America’s economic interests and social responsibility (good corporate citizen) commitments.

Are you familiar with the RWJ report titled “The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health” by the Committee on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Initiative on the Future of Nursing, at the Institute of Penn Medicine (University of Pennsylvania Health System)?

As we know, initiatives like the one that produced this report, as recent as 2011, come and go. What remains is the report and what committed professional like yourself and our colleagues do with the information.

We at The Policy ThinkShop were inspired by a nurse colleague not only to pullout this report but to post a comment on our blog for your benefit.

“In 2008, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) approached the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to propose a partnership to assess and respond to the need to transform the nursing profession. Recognizing that the nursing profession faces several challenges in fulfilling the promise of a reformed health care system and meeting the nation’s health needs, RWJF and the IOM established a 2-year Initiative on the Future of Nursing. The cornerstone of the initiative is this committee, which was tasked with producing a report containing recommendations for an action-oriented blueprint for the future of nursing, including changes in public and institutional policies at the national, state, and local levels (Box S-1). Following the report’s release, the IOM and RWJF will host a national conference on November 30 and December 1, 2010, to begin a dialogue on how the report’s recommendations can be translated into action. The report will also serve as the basis for an extensive implementation phase to be facilitated by RWJF.”

The report explains the committee of experts charge in producing the study and report as follows:

The committee may examine and produce recommendations related to the following issues, with the goal of identifying vital roles for nurses in designing and implementing a more effective and efficient health care system:

Reconceptualizing the role of nurses within the context of the entire workforce, the shortage, societal issues, and current and future technology;

Expanding nursing faculty, increasing the capacity of nursing schools, and redesigning nursing education to assure that it can produce an adequate number of well prepared nurses able to meet current and future health care demands;

Examining innovative solutions related to care delivery and health professional education by focusing on nursing and the delivery of nursing services; and

Attracting and retaining well prepared nurses in multiple care settings, including acute, ambulatory, primary care, long term care, community and public health.

“In 2008, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation approached the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to propose a partnership between the two organizations. The resulting collaboration became the two-year Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Initiative on the Future of Nursing at the IOM. The committee was chaired by former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, and the goal was to look at the possibility of transforming the nursing profession to meet the challenges of a changing health care landscape. The report produced by the committee, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, makes specific and directed recommendations in the areas of nurse training, education, professional …”

The Polity ThinkShop brings you this important report on the State of our American State

Have unions been dealt yet another blow, now ironically by the well intentioned ACA reform?

If the federal government mandates that business and individuals obtain insurance is this setting a president for the federal government to regulate and mandate worker gains without the use of union muscle?

These are provocative questions, at least for people who still remember the sacrifices that were made to create unions and the horrible conditions that preceded them.

“Last week’s vote by workers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, Tenn. plant against joining the United Auto Workers union — despite VW’s tacit encouragement — points up the challenges faced by U.S. organized labor. Even though unions retain much public support, the share of American workers who actually belong to one has been falling for decades and is at its lowest level since the Great Depression.

In a Pew Research Center survey conducted in June 2013, about half (51%) of Americans said they had favorable opinions of labor unions, versus 42% who said they had unfavorable opinions about them. That was the highest favorability rating since 2007, though still below the 63% who said they were favorably disposed toward unions in 2001. In a separate 2012 survey, 64% of Americans agreed that unions were necessary to protect working people (though 57% also agreed that unions had “too much power”).”

The Policy ThinkShop calls your attention to a very hopeful challenge being proposed by key health leaders and philanthropists nationwide and led by a tremendous investment and vision from the leadership of the RWJ Foundation.

A quote from our Policy ThinkShop comments on this issue:

“After many years of personal, familial and community health experience in the private and public health sectors, we can see real hope and investment in these words and nascent vision from Risa–namely that corporate good is finally being aligned with social good in the areas of personal, family and community health.

The hospital, pharmaceutical and academic sectors have traditionally focused on health as a disease problem and the various commodities and professions associated with the industry that evolved around personal, family, community and public health problems in general. Disease and social suffering have too often been rapped in the injurious cloak of stigma and disdain. Too often we see individual health problems in pejorative ways that lead us away from shared solutions because of the more salient confounding factors we “like” to see. Perhaps empowering the sick and the needy so that they have commitment and a voice to join the proposed transformation of our healthcare culture is a starting place. This can begin through improved interpersonal health communication processes in our health professions at the level of service, for example. It can also be complemented by a health department, by community, by neighborhood initiative that addresses health literacy efficacy on the part of parents, mothers and youth.”

Does your community relations model incorporate new technologies, social media and senior citizens? Why not? Is your marketing vision inclusive of recent technological change and all its potential? Do you see technology as something that is inherently for the young? Think again…

When it comes to community organizing, community building and solving local problems don’t leave seniors out. Do not assume that age alone is keeping baby boomers out of the social scene. According to PEW there is a growing potential in the way seniors are using new technology and it may have very positive implications for your community organizing goals …

As of April 2012, 53% of American adults ages 65 and older use the internet or email. Though these adults are still less likely than all other age groups to use the internet, the latest data represent the first time that half of seniors are going online. After several years of very little growth among this group, these gains are significant.

Overall, 82% of all American adults ages 18 and older say they use the internet or email at least occasionally, and 67% do so on a typical day.

Once online, most seniors make internet use a regular part of their lives.

For most online seniors, internet use is a daily fixture in their lives. Among internet users ages 65 and older, 70% use the internet on a typical day. (Overall, 82% of all adult internet users go online on an average day.)

After age 75, internet and broadband use drops off significantly.

Internet usage is much less prevalent among members of the “G.I. Generation” (adults who are currently ages 76 and older)1 than among other age groups. As of April 2012, internet adoption among this group has only reached 34%, while home broadband use has inched up to 21%.

Seven in ten seniors own a cell phone, up from 57% two years ago.

A growing share of seniors own a cell phone. Some 69% of adults ages 65 and older report that they have a mobile phone, up from 57% in May 2010. Even among those currently ages 76 and older, 56% report owning a cell phone of some kind, up from 47% of this generation in 2010. Despite these increases, however, older adults are less likely than other age groups to own these devices. Some 88% of all adults own a cell phone, including 95% of those ages 18-29.

One in three online seniors uses social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

Social networking site use among seniors has grown significantly over the past few years: From April 2009 to May 2011, for instance, social networking site use among internet users ages 65 and older grew 150%, from 13% in 2009 to 33% in 2011. As of February 2012, one third (34%) of internet users ages 65 and older use social networking sites such as Facebook, and 18% do so on a typical day. Among all adult internet users, 66% use social networking sites (including 86% of those ages 18-29), with 48% of adult internet users making use of these sites on a typical day.

By comparison, email use continues to be the bedrock of online communications for seniors. As of August 2011, 86% of internet users ages 65 and older use email, with 48% doing so on a typical day. Among all adult internet users, 91% use email, with 59% doing so on a typical day.”

“Marketing is rapidly becoming one of the most technology-dependent functions in business. In 2012 the research and consulting firm Gartner predicted that by 2017, a company’s chief marketing officer would be spending more on technology than its chief information officer was. That oft-quoted claim seems more credible every day.A new type of executive is emerging at the center of the transformation: the chief marketing technologist. CMTs are part strategist, part creative director, part technology leader, and part teacher. Although they have an array of titles—Kimberly-Clark has a “global head of marketing technology,” while SAP has a “business information officer for global marketing,” for example—they have a common job: aligning marketing technology with business goals, serving as a liaison to IT, and evaluating and choosing technology providers. About half are charged with helping craft new digital business models as well.Regardless of what they’re called, the best CMTs set a technology vision for marketing. They champion greater …”

The Kaiser Family Foundation has released its first survey of the population finding new health coverage under the recently implemented ACA reform. The survey delineates two main groups taking advantage of the increased access to health insurance: those who had non-group coverage and those who had no insurance at all. The experiences of these two groups may prove important, the report goes on to say, with significant implications on how the success of the ACA reform is judged.

Apparently, the success of the ACA reform in brining people into the insured fold may be limited by financial literacy, insurance literacy, and health literacy deficits evident in the Kaiser Family Foundation survey.

A preliminary read of the survey report findings by The Policy ThinkShop points to an emergent need to address health literacy in the newly covered group in order to ensure that coverage recipients understand how to take advantage of their presumed efficacy in the insurance market and in their presumed increased access to healthcare itself and cost saving prevention health services. According to the survey:

“Health insurance is complicated, and many previous studies have documented gaps in health insurance literacy among consumers. The survey finds evidence of this among those who purchase their own coverage, with many respondents unable to answer some basic questions about their plans. For example, nearly one in five non-group enrollees (18 percent) say they don’t know the amount of their monthly premium and almost four in ten (37 percent) don’t know the amount of their annual deductible. Among those with ACA-compliant plans, three in ten (30 percent) say they don’t know the metal level of their plan (platinum, gold, silver or bronze), and among those who report getting a government subsidy to defray their premium cost, nearly half (47 percent) couldn’t say what the amount of the subsidy is.”

The survey report goes on to highlight the segment of the population surveyed who are more privileged because of their prior experience obtaining insurance:

“Some groups are more knowledgeable than others, including college graduates, those with higher incomes, and small business owners. Plan switchers, who likely have more experience buying coverage in the non-group market, are also more likely than those who were previously uninsured to be able to report the metal level of their plan and their premium and deductible amounts.”

“January 1, 2014 marked the beginning of several provisions of the Affordable Care Act ACA making significant changes to the non-group insurance market, including new rules for insurers regarding who they must cover and what they can charge, along with the opening of new Health Insurance Marketplaces also known as “Exchanges” and the availability of premium and cost-sharing subsidies for individuals with low to moderate incomes. Data from the Department of Health and Human Services and others provide some insight into how many people purchased insurance using the new Marketplaces and the types of plans they picked, but much remains unknown about changes to the non-group market as a whole. The Kaiser Family Foundation Survey of Non-Group Health Insurance Enrollees is the first in a series of surveys taking a closer look at the entire non-group market. This first survey was conducted from early April to early May 2014, after the close of the first ACA open enrollment period. It reports the views and experience of all non-group enrollees, including those with coverage obtained both inside and outside the Exchanges, and those who were uninsured prior to the ACA as well as those who had a previous source of coverage non-group or otherwise.”

Addressing health problems in communities takes more than understanding what causes them or who they impact most. It takes a motivated network of stakeholders to define policies, bring resources, and build appropriate programs. What can you do to successfully convene and motivate local thought leaders to help you in your public health cause?

Motivating others to work with you requires a command of the relevant facts to build a reasonable conversation. Commanding local data, defining local health problems (in terms of needed policies, plans and programs) will help you form a team of local stakeholders that can support your vision of a healthier community.

This year the RWJF released its fifth edition of its county health ranking report. The report focuses on the relationship between how you feel and where you live. The website provides a user friendly set of online tools for understanding demographic variables and performing health analysis that can help you increase your “health literacy” as a community member, stakeholder, policy maker and leader with a focus on addressing community health challenges.

The following resources will help you make progress on the health issues impacting your community.

The Policy ThinkShop provides you with the following summary of the findings and user friendly links to the website where you can plugin your state, county, etc., and get your data:

The rate of preventable hospital stays decreased about 20 percent from 2003 to 2011.

Smoking rates dropped from 21 percent in 2005 to 18 percent in 2012.

Completion of at least some college attendance increased slightly from 59 percent in 2005 to 64 percent in 2012.

This year’s report also features several new measures:

Housing:

Almost 1 in 5 households are overcrowded, pose a severe cost burden, or lack adequate facilities to cook, clean, or bathe.

These problems are greatest on the East and West coasts, in Alaska, and in parts of the South.

Transportation:

More than three-quarters of workers drive to work alone and among them 33 percent drive longer than a half hour each way.

Driving contributes to physical inactivity, obesity and air pollution.

Food Environment:

People in many parts of the country face food insecurity or the threat of hunger and limited access to healthy foods, especially in counties in the Southwest, across parts of the South and in the Western United States.

Mental Health:

Amid growing attention to mental health care, the availability of mental health providers in the healthiest counties in each state is 1.3 times higher than in the least healthy counties.

The west and northeast regions of the country have the best access to mental health providers.

Injury-Related Deaths:

The third-leading cause of death in the United States, injury death rates are 1.7 times higher in the least healthy counties than in the healthiest counties.

These rates are particularly high in the Southwest, part of the Northwest including Alaska and in the East South Central and Appalachian regions.

Exercise Opportunities:

Access to parks or recreational facilities in the healthiest counties is 1.4 times higher than in the least healthy counties.”

The internet is instantaneously connecting the world and speeding up business. The public relations and communications capacity of firms is being multiplied by their ability to broadcast messages to huge audiences at small prices. But what happens when communications experts phase market opportunities in languages and cultures they can now more easily reach but do not understand?

As world trade expands on the wings of technological progress and the opening of huge markets (like the Chinese, new leaders like Brazil, and others) creates a need for intercultural exchange, speaking a second or third language may prove to be a key asset. Depending on the languages you speak, your career prospects could differ accordingly.

“Why do the languages offer such different returns? It has nothing to do with the inherent qualities of Spanish, of course. The obvious answer is the interplay of supply and demand. This chart reckons that Spanish-speakers account for a bit more of world GDP than German-speakers do. But an important factor is economic openness. Germany is a trade powerhouse, so its language will be more economically valuable for an outsider than the language of a relatively more closed economy.”

In seemingly endless times of “trash talk” that led to an improbable and unpopular political victory, the newly minted president clamors: “Now arrives the hour of action.” Fleeting relief comes to the nation as the transition […]

The ThinkShop promotes connections to all forms of social media to bring you resources beyond what you’ll find in your daily routine…

Take a "Brain Break" and visit this "fun link" by clicking this image now...

Break for Fun… click video below or have more fun by clicking the pic above…

Policy ThinkShop: Relax, we did the research for you…

Welcome to Policy ABC's ThinkShop, where getting news and public policy analysis is as easy as "A B C."

"The Policy ThinkShop team works hard researching the latests and most interesting news and reports. The resulting links will point you to the original sources so that you can spend as little time as possible getting the most news possible."

Public Policy and Culture

Policy ThinkShop Resources

Our experts do the searching and serve up the best resources to help you stay on top of key public policy issues.

Featured Twitter Friend: Health Literacy ABCs

Health Literacy

Twitter Friend: MigrationPundit

Policy ThinkShop: “THINK TOGETHER”

"Policy is codified knowledge that stands as a universal guide for social action. Public policy is shaped by those who know and who act on that knowledge. We at The Policy ThinkShop share information so others can think and act in the best possible understanding of "The Public Interest."